August 24, 2003

Dear Friends in Christ,

Greetings, it is early Sunday morning in Mulanje. Our electric power usually goes off at 5:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, but my computer still has some time on the battery so I can write this email. Soon the church bell, which is almost in my front yard, will ring to remind us of the English service from 8:00 to 9:00 this morning. This English service is my only opportunity to worship in English all week, so it is a blessing for me. I am writing to inform you of a workshop we will be having at Mulanje Mission Hospital this upcoming week and to ask for your prayers for the workshop.

Cervical cancer is the most common cancer in women in Malawi, if you do not take into account Kaposi's sarcoma, which is the cancer that comes with the AIDS epidemic. This type of cancer is not at all common in the United States because we screen for the early signs with a pap smear and can prevent it from ever happening. In Malawi there is no screening with pap smears because the infrastructure to do pap smears is not in existence. Another way to prevent cervical cancer is simply by looking at the cervix after applying vinegar to it. This will allow a trained observer to detect white lesions of the cervix that might become cancer in the future. This is the subject for the workshop that I have organized. We are planning on training at least ten nurses in the technique of visual inspection of the cervix with acetic acid, which is called "VIA." Also, we plan to train them how to do cryotherapy, which is a simple and painless technique on how to freeze the cervix to remove the white lesions.

I humbly ask your prayers for this workshop.

Sincerely,

Sue

The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 48